Snatch the Sound
by alpha aquarii
Summary: Hizumi visits Eyes both to steal something and to ask for something else. The piano is so easy to break, but Eyes is harder. Mangaverse. Oneshot.


Spoilers for Volume 13.

_**snatch**_

the

_**sound**_

"I killed Kanone Hillbert."

Eyes continues to play. The voice is far off, at the mouth of the auditorium, decaying like the sound of a piano key touched by a hesitant hand.

The killer's steps on the cracked tiles cannot help but fall into the rhythm of the piece Eyes is playing. That alone is a small victory, he tells himself. Closer the murderer comes, until he lays a slender forearm on the edge of the grand piano with its lifted lid.

"I killed," he murmurs, voice lilting with the song's melody, "Kanone Hillbert."

Eyes continues to play.

The murderer exhales and drops his other hand into the piano, slightly above the exposed strings as if daring one of the jumping hammers to strike him. "Did you hear me, Eyes Rutherford?"

Eyes nods. After a moment, he says in carefully measured breaths, "It is difficult to speak in keeping with the rhythm. Wait if you will."

"Mm, well, I can't object to listening to your world-famous playing." And the murderer rests his head on the arm laid on the piano's edge. His other arm still dangles into the piano's depths, which slightly obstructs the character of the sound. Eyes can't complain; he's asked for patience, something he himself does not completely possess – his heart leaps faster than his hands when he wonders when Kirie will call him back with the DNA test results of the cursed brothers. Patience – the piano – an abandoned place to play – these are all things he needs right now.

So he does not rush the piece, both for his own sake and the listener's. The piano fills the auditorium, and even though the notes are slightly off color from years of silence, the melody is precise. It rejuvenates the stale air and sends it spiraling about again over the collapsed seats and creaky stage.

Then it ends. Eyes lifts his hands, then his bowed head, and turns to face the killer. "I know what you did. Is that all you came to say, Hizumi?"

Hizumi looks at him with his head still on his arm, his smile off-kilter. "Yeah. I guess. That's all I had planned. I just wanted to see you."

"Were you expecting a grand show? Of grief, perhaps, or anger?"

"I think I already saw the show, didn't I?" The boy lifts his head and walks around the piano, flicking a string, fiddling with the rod that props the lid up. "I… I've run out of things to do. I've made all the preparations for the final showdown with Ayumu, but as you know, I can't move yet until you do."

"The moves we will make… I don't even know what they are yet." _Patience_. He traces a scale up and down two octaves to quell his restless hands.

"So we're both waiting." Hizumi gives a shaky sigh. He has come full circle around the piano and now stands besides Eyes. "By the way, I can't apologize about Kanone. I had to do it to force Ayumu into a losing position."

Eyes holds his fingers over the piano keys, testing their steadiness. His hand does not shake. Since when is he made of such still stone, polished porcelain, merciless marble? "I wonder if there is any 'have to' in our futures anymore."

"Of course there is," Hizumi breathes sadly. "Do you think I would have done something like that if I had a choice?"

The whimper of a piano chord makes Hizumi start. The sound is hesitant, barely born before it floats off. He casts a glance towards Eyes, who pulls his suddenly trembling hands into his lap.

"To use 'fate' or 'destiny' as an excuse… what tremendous irresponsibility."

Hizumi shivers at the softness of his voice and braces himself against that steely stare. "Stop it. I won't argue. You don't know how hard it was—"

Eyes masks his humorless laugh with a dissonant piano chord that steals the power from Hizumi's words. "_I_ don't know, who had to see the look in my brother's eyes as he stabbed me? Hizumi, you shouldn't have come here in this state. Everything you hear will reflect your pain. You must act as if you have no regrets when you face Narumi-otouto, so weakening your heart here will not help."

"Isn't it true that you want me to leave also because everything I say causes you pain?" Hizumi splays his hand over the piano keyboard and presses hard. A horrible sound.

Eyes turns from him and begins to play a soft piece, ready to erase the memory of that sound. Such perfection, and peace, and patience – Hizumi wants to cry out to spoil the music and amplify its beauty thereby. He hates the calmness that Eyes exudes, a calmness that seals him off from Hizumi's influence, ignoring him. And he will destroy himself even further to make himself heard.

"I do cause you pain," he affirms, raising his voice against an unflinching Eyes. "Fate will steal lots of things from me, but I can take things away from you too."

And he pulls out a switchblade hidden in his jacket. With a strength that hints at the devil's power that will awake in his blood, Hizumi leans over and cuts through every one of the steel piano strings. The momentum of the movement causes him to deeply slice the inner wall of the piano too, leaving a white gash in the ebony skin.

Like that, Eyes has his music stolen.

The hammers still jump and dance but strike the sagging strings with only silence. Hizumi attempts to laugh. He can't. Instead, he says to Eyes, "Won't you concede defeat? It's not making any noise now, not even to your ears."

"What do you think you've taken from me?" Again, Eyes speaks with those soft measured breaths in the rhythm of the song his fingers still play out, even with no feedback from the instrument. "An afternoon's worth of sound? Pianos are much easier to break than human souls. I have a recital coming up and I must practice. And the absence of sound means that I will hear my cell phone ringing more easily when Kirie calls me to move." Eyes sweeps his hands across the entire keyboard in a beautiful glissando that, if heard, might have made statues weep.

Hizumi is far less unshakeable than a statue, and the sight of such a calm pianist immersed in a wasted instrument brings him tears. He collapses onto the piano bench, taking care not to get in the way of Eyes' arms, and stows the knife back into his jacket. "I know. It's completely inhuman to try to take anything more from you after killing your best friend. But I have to establish myself as this sort of person now, like you said, as if I have no regrets. It's… so hard though…"

He glances at Eyes, begging, and is not answered. The abandoned auditorium seems to echo with emptiness. Hizumi reaches out to touch the stone, porcelain, marble boy next to him, but then the frozen figure speaks.

"Your hands, which are now stained just like ours, but by your own volition…" The cadence of Eyes' words match a rhythm only he can hear. "Don't try to seek sympathy or anything else from me with them."

Hizumi wraps his trembling hands around himself instead.

"I killed Kanone Hillbert," he moans, sinking to the floor and leaning against a piano leg.

And Eyes continues to play, silently.

/end

Biggest annoyance while writing this? The fact that I couldn't mention anyone's eyes because it would sound so awkward, like "Eyes looked into Hizumi's gold eyes. His eyes were burning with hatred for Eyes." And I'm usually so poetic with eyes (no pun intended)…

Thanks for reading and please leave me your thoughts.


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